Islam and Hinduism: Persian Heritage In Hindu Traditions

By MURAD ALI BAIG

Persian Heritage In Hindu Traditions

Many would be surprised to learn that no ancient Hindu temple was dedicated to Rama - neither in Ayodhya nor anywhere else.

There had been many old temples and shrines devoted to Vishnu and Shiva and a few to Brahma, Ganesh, Kartikeya, Hanuman, Kubera, Nagas, Kali and Durga as well as a huge number honouring numerous local tribal deities. Only 180 years ago Raja Ram Mohan Roy coined the word 'Hindu' to describe the huge variety of faiths and sects with similar but not identical philosophies, myths and rituals.

The word Hindu was actually a Persian word coined by Cyrus the Great in the 6th century BC, to describe the people who lived beyond the Indus that had been his eastern boundary. The Persians had a phonetic problem with 'S' so Sindhu had become Hindu, as the Soma of the Rigveda had been the Hoama in their Zend Avesta.

The Persian connections are very interesting. The Zend Avesta may have been older than the Rigveda as its main deities of Varuna, Surya and Aryaman were the Purvi Devtas or old deities of the Rigveda. The Rigveda was originally written in the Kharoshti script that, like Persian and Arabic, is written from right to left. Actually Devanagri was the fifth script used for Indian texts. After Kharoshti came Brahmi Lipi, somewhat similar to the 'pinman' Akkadian script of ancient Babylon, then Pali and Gupta Lipi. The distinctive 'washing on a line' Devanagri script only emerged after the 6th century AD. So Sanskrit was not strictly the mother of languages - it was actually the daughter of an older language similar if not identical to the now forgotten Old Persian.

Many common words in the Hindu lexicon like Aryavarta, Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra can only be understood from a reading of the Persian Zend Avesta. The word Aryavarta, or land of the Aryas, seems to have evolved from the Avestan words Aryenem Vaego. Vaego means seed as in Beeja so Aryenem Vaego actually means the seed of the Aryas.

Many Indo-European tribes who left Central Asia in the 18th century BC were powerful because they could domesticate and use their swift horses to demolish the ox and donkey mounted armies of many great civilisations. But their horses were too small to take the weight of a mounted warrior. So they yoked them in pairs in a light bow fronted chariot with a charioteer holding the reins with a warrior with a spear or a bow, standing behind him. Other Indo-European tribes like the Dorians who penetrated Greece and the Aryas who settled in Iran and India had a similar tradition. Since the chariot was important, their warriors were called Ratheshwar from which the word Kshatriya was derived.

Their bards, singing hymns extolling their adventures, later became their priests and the word Arthvan, meaning a person of essence, evolved to become Brahmins. Their workers and herders of their sheep and cattle were called Vastrayosh and when they settled down to become cultivators and traders, Vastrayosh evolved to become Vaishya. There had originally been only three castes but a collection of camp followers and slaves who they had gathered on their travels were called Hatoksha. Perhaps this was the origin of the word Shudra in India at a later time.

Such fascinating phonetic affinities show that there is much more to history than is available just from selective Sanskrit literary sources.